But She's Really Good On The Frets
The numbers were ganging up on her.
On its own, that would have been bad enough: to simply have the multiple columns of digits in the ledger (and it just had to be a physical book, didn't it?) know they were capable of outsmarting a Princess, largely through making her feel stupid. Pipp wasn't particularly good at that sort of math. Zipp, as the heir, had been prodded into taking instruction on accounting, advanced budgeting, and the upkeep of a proper tax code. The spare had mostly understood money to exist as something she didn't carry and certainly never had to spend. When it was known that simply having her seen with just about any product was a surefire route to popularity -- really, they should be paying her -- then what kind of society wasn't willing to nose everything over to a princess at no cost?
She had an answer to that now. 'What kind of society?' equaled 'Maretime Bay'. Somewhere that didn't give royalty the respect which random luck of birth so clearly deserved. And after a few seasons of living in the shore town, Pipp had also learned that it was the sort of place which apparently expected a princess to balance her manestyle shop's expense sheet.
By herself.
And she wasn't even supposed to be doing that.
It was a slow day in Mane Melody, and Pipp was still trying to reconcile how those could even exist. Really, what kind of pony wouldn't want to have their styling done by a princess? If she'd tried to open the business in Zephyr Heights, then the line to get into the salon would have started just outside the door, wrapped around the city a few times and, in the Second Age Of Unity, eventually begun to hover. But this was Maretime Bay, where the citizens hadn't grown up loving her.
Additionally, they weren't citizens of the crown. She couldn't order them into purchasing services from her. And when it came to the mostly-earth-ponies who surrounded her... the populace claimed to have learned certain lessons, all based in previous experience.
Such as 'Came in for a wash & curl: left with my mane animated into unrequested life and trying to strangle me'.
That was considered to be a bad day at Mane Melody. A 'good' one was 'My hooves have never been so smooth and golden: still waiting for birds to stop falling out of the sky when the resulting stink wafts that high'. Most of the Bay felt the salon needed to tighten its quality control standards and Pipp, who mixed all of the treatments herself with the air of a creative chef who felt that taking the berry off the stem just wasted a step and wasn't quite sure which button on the oven represented DON'T BROIL, believed she was all the quality anypony could ever need.
They... didn't like something she'd done. It was almost impossible to believe, and Pipp only managed the feat through putting Maretime Bay together with Inherent Lack Of Taste, then factoring in a basic truth: she wasn't a marked stylist. She was still learning on the job. It wasn't as if they were attacking something she was inherently good at. Something she'd been born to.
Even so, slow days just didn't make sense. Pipp, with some accuracy, blamed the annoyingly-long memories of the locals and mostly relied on tourist traffic from the Heights. Such traveling ponies were loyal, appreciative of her efforts, and just about guaranteed to come in. Once each.
Still, it was a working business, and such enterprises had a nasty side effect. They generated Math.
It was a quiet spring day in Maretime Bay: one of the rare times when the breezes stopped for a few hours and Pipp could pretend the world didn't mostly smell like salted fish. (She perfumed the interior of the salon regularly, also mixed most of those aromatic blends herself, and didn't quite understand how Mane Melody had become the regional center of the All-Ages Breath Holders Nationals.) It was a good time to go over the books or rather, it was a good time to have somepony else do it. That was what other ponies were there for. Pipp's mother had recognized that the younger daughter was going to encounter minor difficulties in adjusting to life outside the palace, and had dispatched an assistant accordingly. One of the younger palace guards, loyal and dedicated and fully bound by his NDA -- but just as much to the point, somepony who could deal with the fiscal realities of day-to-day existence, while carefully educating a princess in how it all got done.
'Somepony' had spent the last ten minutes openly flirting with Jazz. Giggles went back and forth across the salon, occasionally disrupting the dusty rays of sunlight which illuminated empty chairs.
This annoyed Pipp on multiple levels. Rocky was her subject. She could order him to stop, but -- what did that do for the other one? Absolutely nothing. So she'd been poring over the ledger with increasing, fully-open frustration for that same amount of time. She'd turned public fuming into an art. And he hadn't noticed. There was a princess in highly-visible distress and Rocky was all wrapped up in his own social life. A stallion without priorities.
That was part of the annoyance. Another, much louder internal voice steadily grumbled that if Pipp wasn't getting any, then nopony should be getting any. Also, why wasn't she getting some? The line for that should loop from the Bay to Bridlewood and back. And it wasn't as if ponies didn't know how to approach her. She'd personally made sure to have the Protocol Guide For Dating Royalty posted online, in multiple file formats. And how long did it take to read through seven hundred pages anyway?
But she didn't have any suitors. Rocky was completely wrapped up with Jazz, and utterly failing to see that numbers were being mean to Pipp. Her guard had no interest in saving her. And there were no customers in the salon, no audience, no reassurance of status and popularity and love...
Pipp looked up from her desk, noted how her subject and the earth pony mare had somehow narrowed down an entire planet until there wasn't room for anything beyond the two of them, then launched a theatrical, well-practiced sigh of integer-based agony. The giggling drilled holes into it.
The princess fumed. Artfully.
...well, there was one surefire cure to being ignored, and that was being worshiped. Or, at the very least, receiving proof of same.
Pipp's left forehoof carefully pushed the foulness of the black accounting ledger off to one side. The right forehoof adhered to a beloved rectangle of technology and validation, then nudged Bestie into full view.
She hummed a few notes at the phone's screen, and it turned on. Pipp, confident that few ponies could hope to duplicate her voiceprint or sheer vocal range, had discarded typed passwords in favor of musical security. It worked perfectly, as long as she didn't count the time when she'd trotted past a small chorus of singing fillies and found her email trying to erase itself.
The first thing she did was to check Aircast. The video platform of Zephyr Heights had the older honor of hosting Pipp's music videos and in deference to their long relationship, she'd made sure to upload her newest composition two days before putting it anywhere else. (In some ways, the concept of 'anywhere else' was still sinking in.) And in doing so, she brought the numbers back to her side.
Pipp, who found more warmth in attention than sunlight, basked within view count digits: all seven places of them. There was also a green-tinged total at the lower right of the video, and she contented herself with the knowledge that the most important number would continue to go up. Green, always green, evergreen, forever young and beloved and popular. The most popular performer in the world, and if that world was now made up of three cities instead of one? It still held true. Just catch Onyx getting anywhere within thirty percent of Pipp's numbers! The unicorn couldn't even figure out where to hold the camera, and that was when she had the magical ability to never worry about directly holding anything!
The younger princess was already feeling better. More -- herself. Maybe if she replayed a few Greatest Hits, listening to her own renditions of the Three Chords --
-- but there was something else to examine. Because if there was now a platform to which she uploaded first...
She winced. Forced herself to change URLs, and reluctantly loaded up Streakshot.
This was the dominant video site of the Bay and for some reason, it had refused to simply surrender and allow itself to be absorbed by the superior programming of Aircast -- but Pipp still had a use for it. She was trying to expand her brand and audience alike, and how could you live among earth ponies if you didn't show a willingness to entertain them? So she'd finally started posting compositions to the inferior platform. It showed her local fans that she cared and they, in turn, demonstrated just how many of them there really were. Because that hosting of the video had been up for less than a day, and when she considered the numbers --
-- factor in playing time, stability of the local network, range, figure some of them went for Aircast early, the youngest ones haven't learned how to keep the continual replay loop going while they sleep, and a little division gives me an estimated regional fanbase count of...
(She wasn't good with budgets or accounting. But there were ways in which Pipp was extremely good at math. As with the world, the base requirement was to have the numbers revolving around her.)
...way too little.
She winced: an act which made her briefly grateful for the lack of attentive audience. Maretime Bay still had a number of problems for a performing princess, and one of them was that the regional server farms had refused to implement the programs which made Pipp into Zephyr Heights' universal click-through. Any pegasus who wanted to check the weather forecast usually had to skip over Pipp six times just to reach the radar, and it allowed her to accumulate millions of views in a world whose sapient population was -- well, larger now, but still nowhere near her actual play count. Streakshot's totals were somewhat more reflective of the Bay's actual population. And while Number was still going Up, she would need to find some new tricks in order to keep the locals from comparing results and wondering just why the ascension of digits was so slow --
-- well, at least they like the new song. The greencount looks good --
Pipp paused. Squinted.
-- what's that?
There was a second number, to the right of the green. She'd never seen a number in that location before, certainly not on Aircast. She would have remembered, for both placement and -- color. Numbers in that section were supposed to be green and thanks to a certain amount of cultural overlap, Streakshot did have a greencount. There was just this -- other thing.
Pipp carefully enlarged the image. Regarded the single, oddly-placed digit.
Then she tapped the icon on its immediate left, because that felt like the surest way to find out what that little count meant.
Her left eye twitched.
Rocky was, in Pipp's opinion, a very skilled stylist. When it came to the untamed social wilds represented by interracial dating, he was counted among the very first truly dedicated explorers, and nothing was going to stop him from reaching his intended destination. But when it came to simply guarding...
Her distressed form had slumped off the bench. Then she had weakly forced one green eye open to see a concerned stallion standing over her. And between those two moments, five whole seconds had passed. Even when she figured for cross-salon travel time, the speed of response seemed to lack something.
She blamed Jazz. And hormones.
Jazz presumably wasn't responsible for Rocky's failure to follow up on Pipp's demand that he do something. Hormones, however...
Zipp had Opinions on social interaction, and the most common one was 'No'. The heir liked solitude, privacy, and most of the realm had been vaguely aware that Zephyrina's assumption of the throne would shortly be followed by the Don't Bother Me Act Of Insert Year Here. The penalty for violating it was presumed to be death, and the new queen would absolutely not show up for the execution because somepony there might ask her to say something.
Zipp could talk to ponies, now and again. (If 'again' had been too frequent, this came with steadily-increasing effort, and the social fuel tank would quickly run dry.) She was capable of making friends, and she had never closed Pipp out. But the younger sibling, who'd found the elder looking over her tablet while perched within the Bay's community garden, understood how Zipp worked. The act of raising a blue gaze away from the screen's display started a timer. There was a maximum duration for which Zipp could (poorly) feign interest and if that ran out before the actual enticement and accompanying true curiosity kicked in, there would be a race between gaze and subject to see which could be dropped faster.
Pipp had only so long to bring her sister into the most noble of causes. She spoke quickly. Zipp's half-bored gaze roamed across Pipp's features, right up until the moment when those blue eyes began to narrow.
"So you got a downvote," the heir finally said.
"I KNOW!"
"One downvote," the older sister offhoofedly dismissed sibling pain, as older sisters were sadly wont to do. "One single, solitary --"
"It's never happened before!" Pipp immediately protested. "Nopony in Zephyr Heights ever -- 'downvoted' me! I didn't even know those existed...!"
"Well, you wouldn't," Zipp casually shrugged. "Apparently they're pretty new around here, at least for entertainment stuff." Paused. "Well, they're new now. They were old before."
"How can something be --"
It got her another shrug, and boredom radiated from slightly-flared feathers. "Sunny was talking about them the other day. Their platform used to have downvotes enabled for everything. So you could see how many ponies didn't like something. But then Streakshot made them hidden. And then they took them away entirely. They're just coming back now, because ponies felt like not being able to indicate dislike was censorship." The streaked tail flicked with annoyance. "According to Sunny, they're having some code problems. If you downvote, you can't leave a comment. Lots of annoyed ponies on that one. The programmers should have it fixed soon, and the associated comments will show as redtext --"
"-- somepony," Pipp frantically cut off the flow of nonsense, "downvoted me! They didn't like my last composition, or the video, or the -- they didn't like it, Zipp!"
They didn't like me.
It's not even 'doesn't love'. This isn't Zephyr Heights. They weren't raised to love the palace and everypony in it.
Someone doesn't like...
A little too casually, "Yeah. And?"
The siblings stared at each other across the greenery.
"Nopony downvotes me," Pipp pushed. "I checked my entire history on Aircast. There isn't one downvote --"
"-- well, there wouldn't be," Zipp cut her off.
"Because pegasi have taste!"
"Because," the older sibling calmly said, "Zephyr Heights had some really old laws around about open criticism of the palace. Which kind of got kicked into the ground after the whole wire thing came out, and Mom was never big on enforcing them anyway: that's why the old fan forums could exist without too much trouble. But while they were still going, Aircast thought the safest thing to do was make sure they were in full compliance. So downvotes were disabled on your stuff. Still are."
...so does that mean there's pegasi who don't like my music and just weren't able to say --
-- no. There aren't any.
They love me.
All of them love me.
It's not as if that many pegasi got hit by the 'animated manes' thing.
Or the one where everypony's hair turned into feathers and tried to fly away with them.
...they looked better that way.
Ponies should have been more appreciative. Especially the unicorns and earth ponies. How else were they going to fly?
And what's quality control, anyway? I'm quality. And I am extremely controlled.
"But this is the Bay," Zipp continued as the sands on the social interaction timer continued to tumble into the lower bulb. "They're not royal subjects. The city charter grants freedom of speech --"
"It doesn't apply!"
The elder sister carefully tilted her head to the left.
"Freedom of speech doesn't apply," Zipp tried.
"Not when it comes to criticizing a princess!"
The tilt angle increased.
"...okay," Pipp partially relented. "They can have freedom of speech. But when it comes to saying bad things about me, they shouldn't use it."
"With all of the stuff that your mixes have done to the locals," Zipp cautiously began, "you wouldn't be leaving them with a lot to talk about --"
"ZIPP! This is my music! This wasn't a downvote on my styling or the latest Mane Melody background scent or you do get used to the golden hooves after a while, you really do --"
"-- snout-blindness --"
"-- it was a downvote on my singing," Pipp slowly said. "Or the composition, or --"
Her head turned. Green eyes briefly regarded a colorful pattern of hip-mounted fur, then looked back.
"-- me," the younger sister slowly finished. "When somepony attacks my music, they come after me. It's... more personal. You know it is..."
"Taste is subjective," Zipp counted.
"Good music is universal."
"Only if you've got a really small universe."
They glared at each other. They were siblings. They were good at that.
I've got less than three minutes...
"Why are you telling me about all of this stuff, anyway?" Zipp asked.
"Because it's your department!"
The heir blinked. "My what?"
"Somepony downvoted me! Anonymously! Which means --" and Pipp carefully dropped both tones and volume onto the lower registers of conspiracy "-- I don't know who it was. That's a mystery. One which needs solving. So I thought, who would be more inclined to solve a mystery than the best amateur detective in three whole cities, the great Zephyrina --"
"No," Zipp stated.
Pipp blinked.
"Why not?"
"Because it's stupid," the older sibling expertly pronounced. "One pony doesn't like you. Big deal. Thousands do. Go with the majority."
"You don't care!" Pipp accused.
Zipp's head was starting to go down, drawn by a sort of visual magnetism.
"Not about this."
"You won't help me," Pipp followed up, and expertly added in the first hint of rising tears: the added sniffle was just Art. "You see how much I'm hurting, and you won't even take an interest --"
"I've done a lot of stuff where I asked you to be interested and do it with me," Zipp's descending snout announced. "You weren't. You didn't."
"Name one thing!"
Instantly, "Sneaking out of the palace. You wouldn't."
"That's different!"
"How?"
"Consequences!" yelled the recovering agoraphobe. "You never understood the consequences for getting caught --"
Zipp's head came up. Blue eyes looked around. Regarded the sky, the garden, the Bay and, in a totally unfair last place, Pipp.
"I'm in the consequences right now," Zipp said. "So are you. But I'm not getting involved with this downvote thing, and I don't think you should either. One pony doesn't like your music. I could name at least a hundred who still aren't happy about us being here. Triple that for everything Mane Melody keeps doing, which mostly means you. And somehow, they still haven't run us out out of town. So when it comes to the downvote, Pipp -- live with it."
The social sand ran out. Zipp's head went down. Her eyes focused on the tablet's screen, and a forehoof swiped right on Pipp's entire life.
Eventually, the younger sister stomped her way out of the garden. It had to be a stomp. You just couldn't get the same amount of huff into a wing flap.
If her sister didn't understand, then maybe...
Sunny rather placidly pointed out that the earth pony personally tended to gallop along at an approval rating which just barely qualified for positive digits, and it had never really slowed her down. Besides, what was one measly downvote? Didn't the feelings of those who loved Pipp's music mean that much more than the opinion of a single detractor? And maybe they'd even mistapped.
Hitch told her downvoting wasn't a crime. He also wasn't willing to stand before the City Council and request that the act be made into a crime. This instantly proved law enforcement to be useless. Forever. Pipp was still trying to figure out whether the same status applied to stallions. Rocky's rotten reaction time hadn't exactly helped there.
Misty needed to have the following explained to her: coding, websites, algorithms, music videos, view counts, and the basics of 'celebrity'. And when that was done, she still didn't understand what the downvote meant to Pipp. Misty had grown up in an environment of universal disapproval, because the universe had been defined as 'Opaline'. When it came to alien concepts, the idea that ponies could approve of what she was doing was somewhat more foreign to Misty than the average dragon.
Izzy had the most sympathy. In her way, she was just as much of an artist as Pipp: only on a smaller scale and in a much more visual, glue-centric medium. And Bridewood's basic nature in the time before the Second Age meant that if Izzy had come up with a creation, then most unicorns were going to disapprove of it: the majority of such rejections were initially based on Izzy having found the energy to do anything at all. But that also meant the unicorn didn't see dismissal as anything special or offensive. Having ponies dislike her creations was just part of the routine.
"And if you're being hated," the crafter finished up as she closed several drawers on the cart, "it's still better than the other thing."
"What's the other thing?"
Placidly, with no more than a shiver of vibration in the overlong mane, "Being ignored."
That thought stayed with her for most of an hour. The idea that you could pour heart, soul, and mark into a creation, only to have nopony deign it worthy of notice or comment or -- anything. That it was possible to sing into a vacuum and listen as vibrations died. A fully non-receptive medium...
She spent some time doing slow-flap circles of the Brighthouse while feeling bad for Izzy, because a princess who was still trying to figure out commoners didn't have anywhere near as much trouble with empathy. But after that, she had to get back to her own problem, and Izzy wasn't going to be any real help in solving it.
Somepony didn't like Pipp's music. And the performer didn't know why.
Perhaps it would have been easier if the comments had been enabled on the downvote. If the anonymous pony had said the background colors of the video didn't suit them, or that one half-aerial dance move -- which Pipp had internally debated for three days -- should have been taken out during the edits. It would have at least given Pipp a starting point. If she'd known what the criticism was, she could have gone to work on dismissing it --
-- or putting together a solution.
Pipp was capable of making mistakes. For example, when it came to the series of events which had eventually placed her in Maretime Bay, she'd clearly needed a lot more practice on judging exactly when to hit the hidden emergency wire release switch.
She had talent. As far as Pipp was concerned, she was the most skilled pop performer of her generation, and her mark did everything possible to help there. But it didn't mean she was perfect --
-- all right: when it came to Mane Melody, there had been some -- minor errors. Little things, which Zephyr Heights would have eventually stopped talking about. (Or never started, by royal order, and those previously-unknown laws were starting to feel like they made a lot of sense.) And maybe Pipp would have benefited from a few testing phases, but how did you get ponies to test things anyway? As far as Pipp was concerned, paying customers were practically volunteers. If you paid to come into a concert, then you'd volunteered to hear whatever songs were being performed. No exceptions.
(A downvote was like somepony walking out on her.)
And with Rocky, there was an absolute limit on what she could order him to do. Especially for those products which mostly came in pink bottles. When it came to figuring out how to assist salon patrons, Rocky was very much in touch with his mare side -- but drew the line at putting his own mane and tail through any of it.
But this wasn't the salon. This was about her singing. Her central skill. Pipp didn't really know how to balance the ledgers on the business, cooking was something other ponies did for you, and she'd originally thought that a salon made sense because she'd been on the receiving end of their services so many times -- but if she couldn't gain approval through singing...
...she didn't even know why they hadn't liked --
-- she had to know.
She had to.
So the next step was finding out.
How was she going to run down the traceback? Well, for starters, she would need the IP address of the downvoter. Streakshot, as primitive as they were, still had to record such things. And it would likely be the true address, because she didn't think the Bay had gotten around to inventing location masking just yet. The palace had its own VPN, and Pipp had never been caught using it. Something she'd done fairly often because when things were getting a little slow on the forums, somepony had to drum up support and who was better suited than !Pi!pp!F!A!N!#1?
As far as Pipp was concerned, Maretime Bay technology was well behind Zephyr Heights, and it was frankly a miracle that Bridlewood had been able to keep a single rhythm game running. So she would surely be able to do something -- if she could just get at the servers. And it wasn't a matter of breaking in. A princess didn't have to commit crimes -- at least, not as a first resort and if something went wrong, Pipp was still royalty. Her status created a certain degree of shielding, mostly because the three cities were still trying to form a collective relationship and Hitch apparently felt that kicking the sisters into his cells would create the diplomatic equivalent of a really bad date. Pipp felt this was a sensible approach. Hitch just went for the medicine cabinet and cracked open his third pain reliever bottle of the day.
Still, she didn't need to break in. If she had, then the plan would have been entirely different. (For starters, she would have tried to account for magical defenses, and that phase of the planning would have lasted right up until she'd remembered that magic was so new as to guarantee that those defenses didn't actually exist yet.) All Pipp needed to do...
...was be Pipp.
The security guard assigned to the front gate at Streakshot was in a mostly-enclosed booth. The head was free to stick out and given the lack of grooming, Pipp sincerely wished it wasn't. He also had an elevated platform from which to glare down at anypony who approached. It was something Pipp could have balanced out in a hurry, just before achieving superiority of both attitude and altitude -- but flight hadn't been around for that long, and maintaining a hover was hard.
Dull brown eyes stared at the approaching princess, and fully failed to register the sheer honor of it all.
She'd dressed up in her best regal gear for the occasion. Just getting stared at felt somewhat insulting.
"I require," Pipp declared in her best Mom imitation, "full access to your server logs. There's a piece of data within which is crucial to the future of Unity."
The guard was silent.
"Zephyr Heights stands before you," the princess continued, just in case the stallion somehow hadn't figured that out. "In all of its royal power and glory. You will open the gates --"
"-- do you have an appointment?"
Pipp blinked.
"Royalty," a credible facsimile of Queen Haven stated, "does not require an appointment --"
"-- does anypony in the building know you?"
The spare took a very, very slow breath.
"I'm the most popular celebrity in the world." And then, in the name of full accuracy, paused. "In the known part of the world. But since we've got the largest city, which includes a lot of pegasi who would be very angry that you even had to ask that question --"
With utter boredom, "-- do they know you personally?"
Pipp's mind sorted through a list of customer names.
...I think she works here, but I haven't seen her since the Tail Self-Strangulation Coat-And-Dip.
..stopped showing up. And that was after I got his mane out of his throat, which was not easy to do when it kept fighting back.
...said something about how about scent was the best key to memory and every time she saw me, she'd be smelling gold hooves for a week.
"...yes?" didn't emerge with a Haven level of confidence.
"No appointment," the guard said. "Nopony who can vouch for you. No entrance."
Her wings flared with anger, spreading to their full span --
"No flying over the gate."
Pipp's tail lashed. She fumed, and did so while staring up because the placement of the window was just that stupid. Held the position --
"And no loitering," the guard smugly told her.
Royalty stomped away.
A deep cerulean mare wearing a back-draped bulky traveling cape trotted up to the guard booth.
"Official electrical safety inspection," said a very deep voice. "Sent by the utility company. Under regulations, you're required to let me in. Immediately. And point out the server farm, as that's the biggest power draw. I'll take it from there."
"Nice manestyle," the guard said.
She flounced her head, just enough to make the new look sway. "Thank you! Now if you could just open --"
"It doesn't hide the roots of the old color," he snidely added. "Or the fact that you smell like fur dye. And I can still see where the headband was pressing during the last look. Plus a little bit of feather down just drifted out from under your cape."
The total stranger said nothing at all. An elaborately-styled tail twitched.
"And you're still short."
There were certain lessons to be found in the royal life and a freshly-washed Pipp, who had been largely independent for about a year, quickly concluded that her time among the commoners had tricked her into ignoring one of the most important. It was the lesson which said that if a princess absolutely had to do something for herself, then matters had already gone critically wrong.
And when she viewed the problem from that angle, it was just a matter of reverting to type.
"Firewall," the visiting green-and-gold pegasus introduced himself -- followed by, with slight embarrassment, "I don't think we've officially met, Princess --"
"-- we haven't," she noted. "But I do remember you from the palace's cybersecurity team. Come in, Firewall. Quickly. Before anypony else sees you."
The stallion glanced around at the exterior of the Brighthouse. "It's that crucial? We got your email about needing -- special resources -- but you didn't put in that much detail..."
"There are things," Pipp solemnly stated, "which are too risky to send. I'll get you set up in the basement."
It took twenty minutes, which included six to sneak the visitor down the ramp, eight for setting up the computer, and three to order Misty into not worrying about why a stallion had been sneaking down the ramp. And then Pipp got right to the point.
"I have evidence of a possible anti-pegasus element in Maretime Bay," she told the cybersecurity expert. "I need you to gallop down the source before it gets any worse."
He took a single, very sharp breath. "I see." A little more slowly, "We've been monitoring from a distance, of course. Especially with the two of you living here, along with the citizens who moved and all of the tourist traffic. We need to know you're all safe. But most of what we've been picking up is the usual social media complaints. Nothing close to an organized movement." With a soft snort, "Frankly, I think this 'Posey' just needs to complain about something for at least two hours per day."
Pipp politely nodded.
"But we don't live here," Firewall added. "Which means we can miss things. So you've spotted something, and it's computer-based."
Again.
"What do you need me to do?" her subject asked, and Pipp smiled.
"Get into the Streakshot servers," she told him. "I need a traceback on an action. Pin it to a physical address. I'll take care of it from there."
He worked for a while.
"I'm in," the expert in superior technology eventually reported. "Is this a video recruiting for anti-pegasus sentiments? Because if somepony posted that --" with open embarrassment "-- then we missed it. But I can find out who uploaded --"
"-- trace this," Pipp told him, and displayed Bestie's preset screen.
He stared at it.
"It's a downvote," Firewall said.
"Yes. Trace the sender. They had to log in to leave it, right? Just find the account."
"It's one downvote," said a stallion who was very good with code and therefore, clearly didn't have any room left in his head for understanding anything else. "It's just one downvote on your video --"
"-- it's anti-pegasus," Pipp technically failed to lie.
The "How?" was utterly offensive.
"I'm a pegasus and a 'downvote' is anti," the princess tensely explained. "Track it."
"I don't think --"
"THAT'S AN ORDER." Pipp sensibly paused. "And do not tell the Queen."
"...but..."
"THAT WAS ANOTHER ORDER."
It was a rather nice house, if a little small. The pale blue residence was set well back from the border fence, featured an impressive amount of well-maintained yard, and the bushes had been carefully shaped. Pipp was almost certain that last part was the result of actual labor. Most earth ponies hadn't gotten their magic to the point where they could precisely guide the shape of the results. Some of them didn't even want to try. Fresh fruit was available in a heartbeat, but getting a strawberry to turn up in the shape of an apple was apparently heresy.
The residence had been maintained, but -- it struck Pipp as the same sort of maintenance she'd had at the palace. Here you have something very old, which has been lived in for a long time. You could paint it, dust here and there, and there's certainly effort being put in on the gardens -- but changing things just wasn't going to happen. It was a building which came with smooth paint, beautiful flowers on the lawn, and an inherent amount of inertia.
And she'd approached it in full daylight. Something which would normally mean the occupants -- occupant? -- might be at work, but...
...she was at the right house. Firewall's skills had connected disapproval to domicile.
She'd also come alone.
What if it is an anti-pegasus conspiracy? From a single downvote grew mighty works --
-- no. Pipp felt it would have needed to be more blatant than that. Besides, she'd checked other videos uploaded by pegasi to Streakshot. Some of them had downvotes, and others didn't. There was no universal disapproval.
If somepony's home... what do I even say?
She shivered. Some of that was because it was spring in the Bay, and the air over the water hadn't truly warmed yet. Ocean breezes blew in almost constantly, chilled fur and skin. But the rest was because she'd wanted to shiver and on a quiet, empty street, there was nopony to see it happen. No damage which could be done to her reputation.
Not that the resident cared about that.
She could have just turned around. Flown away entirely, or gone up into the trees and watched until she saw the face of her tormentor. Stopped there. But she was being hated without a stated reason. Loathing without cause. A mystery, and one which an older sister with priorities would have wanted to solve.
Pipp had to know.
The pegasus forced herself to approach the gate in the fence. Spotted the little attached ringer, and pressed it.
A rather musical series of bells went off inside the small house. Royalty, even under tension, came very close to tapping a hoof.
Time passed.
More time passed. It seemed to like doing that.
Nopony's home.
...this was stupid.
I should just --
-- the door opened.
There was a senior standing within the frame. Her coat was black and brindle-brass: something which put Pipp in mind of a polished woodwind. The mane had the colors and illusionary texture of a well-used wooden reed.
"Yes?" the old mare politely said as she squinted, trying to focus through unpolished glasses at something not quite yet truly seen.
Pipp's brain froze.
Say something.
Say something.
Say something --
Sharp brass eyes widened. A steady gaze came to rest on downy wings.
"If you're lost --" the senior carefully began.
"-- WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME?"
It had been a wail.
Pipp blinked. Heard her voice echoing within her own ears, and her wings began to flare out, getting ready for that crucial escape push. Something which would lead directly into a frantic flight towards the Brighthouse and if she ever saw the mare again, then it was a polite smile and surely you must be mistaken, there's a lot of pegasi around these days and where do you live anyway --
"High B," the mare said. "You wail in high B."
White wings froze.
"B6, to be precise," the senior added. "So your range does go that far. And given the casual ease with which you achieved B6, possibly quite a bit beyond. I suspected as much in watching your videos." And slowly shook her head. "That is what this is about, isn't it?"
Royalty just barely managed a nod.
"Ah," the mare observed. "Very well. I do wish I'd been able to leave a comment..." The aged head slowly shook. "So to answer your question -- as I would for any student to ever pass through my music class -- this is why I downvoted your most recent effort, Ms. Petals: G, C, and D."
A number of well-trained neurons within Pipp's mind perked. Then they observed the paralyzed state being enjoyed by the rest of the brain, and wisely fired themselves.
"Leading into a I-IV-V progression in the key of G," said a very skilled mark talent.
"Yes," the senior passively agreed. "As with the video you'd posted before that. And the one before that. And once I'd managed to make an account, virtually everything on Aircast. I went through your entire catalog, Ms. Petals. For the most part, a pleasurable experience -- but a repetitive one. I can hear the potential in your voice, even when it's not engaging in a wail. And yet you restrict yourself --"
"-- but those are the Three Chords Of Pop!" a somewhat larger portion of Pipp's mind protested. "Everypony uses them! I'm a pop singer! It's wrong not to use -- nopony would understand if I didn't --"
"-- you're also a trendsetter," the older mare cut her off. "And a composer, as I understand it. One who, for the most part, does all of her own arrangements. If you wanted to branch out, then ponies would follow you. To wherever you initially ventured, and perhaps beyond." With a weary shake of the old head, "But you restrict yourself. Out of familiarity, perhaps. Or even fear."
Royalty was silent. Feathers shivered, and tiny pieces of down dropped away.
"You're skilled, Ms. Petals," the earth pony stated. "Wondrously so. I could have wished for a student like you, and there were days when I did. But you have been in a creative rut for some time, which has ground into layers of repetition. I would have enjoyed your most recent song -- if it hadn't been so very much like all of the others from the last two years. A gift like yours..." The soft sigh somehow carried across the empty street, threatened to echo all the way to Zephyr Heights. "...should not be constrained within a mere three chords. So I downvoted that composition. It's not a matter of disliking you, especially as I take care of my own mane and have avoided some of the -- little pitfalls. I suspect you're actually quite likeable, when you allow yourself to be. But your music is becoming monotonous. I dislike that. I loathe squandered potential, and I hope that you will not waste yours. Did that answer your question?"
They stood on opposite sides of the fence for a few seconds. Watching each other.
Monotonous.
Repetitive.
Words which were a mere half-hoofstep away from boring.
"You're a music teacher?"
"I was. Retirement was some time ago." Thin forelegs half-bent into a curtsy. "Chora Clef. Not quite at your service, I suppose, but --"
"-- teach me."
It was Ms. Clef's turn to blink.
"You're a professional --" the senior began.
Pipp forced herself to keep looking into the brass eyes. "-- who's narrowed her world down to three chords and one progression. Which means I'm doing the same thing as just about everypony else, and... all I get for feedback is my fans. They like it, but -- if I keep repeating myself, they'll get bored. Some of them will leave. And they might never tell me why. If I'm doing something wrong, then... teach me."
Silence.
"I can't order you --" Pipp desperately began.
"-- I'm retired," Ms. Clef cut her off. "And I never did have private tutoring sessions."
"...I understand."
Pipp, head lowered in a way which would have indicated that her older sibling was done with social interactions for a lifetime, began to turn away. White wings forced themselves to spread.
The older mare's sigh had an amazing way of carrying on the air. It was probably a trick of the throat.
"So it may take some time to work out a rate," Chora decided. "If I wind up charging one. Come in, please."
It was another quiet spring day, and would remain so because the most recent Mane Melody 'event' had just about guaranteed that nopony was going to trot through the doors until the giant multicolored cloud over the Bay had completely cleared and since it was made from electro-magnetized bits of tail hair, that was probably going to take a while. But it was also going to be quiet because Pipp had been practicing her full vocal range in soundproofed rooms. There was one in the Brighthouse, another at Chora's house, and that was going to be it until the glass stopped breaking.
Pipp was using the time to go over the books again, and the columns of numbers had resumed their conspiracy against her. Rocky and Jazz were mostly going over each other.
...well, what am I supposed to do? Tell them that I'm not paying them to flirt? Half of Rocky's pay came from the palace anyway. Or maybe I should just watch. Get a lesson in flirting...
She observed her employees for a few seconds. Listened to the giggling, saw Jazz get worked up enough to have the tips of ears briefly poke out of the mane, and then gave up. Pipp felt herself to know more about flirting than that. Performing was the art of flirting with the world. Dating was clearly just a matter of narrowing it down. And eventually, somepony would finish reading the Protocol Guide.
...maybe she had to make sure the file was opening properly. Local inferior technology, after all.
There was a business to run, or would be once customers felt it was safe to come in again: something which would presumably resume after voltage-crackling strands stopped drifting down from the sky. And in the quiet time, she could finally figure out how to deal with the accounting -- except that it was giving her a headache. Again.
She needed a distraction.
Pipp's left forehoof carefully pushed the ledger off to one side. The right forehoof nudged Bestie into full view. The screen lit up, and she hummed her Streakshot password.
What's this pop-up?
...oh! They straightened out the code problem!
She checked her most recent video.
The total views were still reflective of the local population, and she had to do something about that because Number wasn't going Up enough. But the greencount looked relatively healthy, and the other one --
-- the redcount wasn't a 'one' any more.
It was a numerical plural. With reinforcements.
Pipp steeled herself. Paused before advancing the screen, and took the deep breaths which were so helpful in both vocal control and stress management.
Easy.
Sometimes ponies don't like whatever's been created.
Sometimes they have good reasons for not liking things and now that they can comment when downvoting, I'll know what those reasons are.
Maybe there's something I need to learn...
She scrolled down.
Who films in a salon? Well, it's not as if she can do anything else there...
Didn't pull off that one dance move and kept it in anyway. Four left hooves. Two right wings.
Did she have surgery on her wings so she'd look younger? I thought they were all supposed to lose the down at puberty! Who does she think she's fooling?
And at the very bottom,
Short. Short-short-shorty. Shortissimo.
Pipp's left eye twitched.
And I hate her stupid mane.
